Samsung is not going to rush out its Galaxy 8 to fill the void left by the Note7 recall.

There had been some rumous flying that Samsung would release the Galaxy 8 early so that the embarrassing death of the Note 7 did not damage its bottom line too much.

However, the company has said that will introduce Galaxy S8 at ‘MWC 2017’, which is held at in Barcelona, Spain at the end of February, as it normally does. It will release Galaxy S8 in South Korea and other countries sequentially starting from middle of March.

A company source told the Electronic Times that even before it released Galaxy Note 7, Samsung had made its plans to announce Galaxy S8. Pushing a release date forward all of sudden is something that is realistically impossible.

Samsung Electronics is using the time to investigate the causes of ignition of Galaxy Note 7 and recovering its trust.

It is also going to add a Blue Coral model to Galaxy S7 Edge to replace demands for premium smartphones.

According to mobile network industries, Galaxy S7 Edge Blue Coral model will come out with 32GB and 64GB and will be released in South Korea on the 4 November.

Its store price for 32GB will be $813.55 and 64GB will be $852.29. Only 32GB storage will be available in Singapore and will be released on the 5 November.

“Although we planned to release Galaxy S7 Edge Blue Coral model to global markets at the same time if possible, schedule for release dates of each country has changed due to current situation of supplies.” said Samsung Electronics.

Demand from the gaming market and VR is pushing up demand for graphics cards, and some of the big players are laughing all the way to the bank.

MSI, Asustek , Gigabyte , Colorful, Galaxy and Zotac, are reporting that their Nvidia-based mid-range to high-end product sales have increased with MSI and Gigabyte expected to ship over 4.8 and 3.45 million graphics cards in 2016.

Digitimes reports that Nvidia is expected to release its new GTX 1050 and GTX 1050Ti GPUs in the near future and graphics card players are optimistic about the new GPUs' shipments in the fourth quarter, the slow season, helping their overall shipments drop only 10 per cent sequentially.

MSI has seen strong shipments and profits in gaming notebook products,and its graphics card sales rise and has caught up with Asustek.

It has has not had good graphics card sales in China, but good shipments to Europe and North America have balanced this out. MSI shipped over four million graphics cards in 2015 and shipped 3.5 million units in the first three quarters of 2016, giving the company a chance to challenge five million unit shipments in 2016.

The company's shipments to Europe and North America are mostly mid-range to high-end products with a bigger margin, MSI is also expected to achieve strong profits in 2016.

Gigabyte's graphics card shipments did not have as strong growth as MSI in the first three quarters of 2016, volumes still reached 2.55 million units. Gigabyte is expected to ship 900,000 graphics cards in the fourth quarter. Gigabyte's profits from the graphics card business in 2016 are expected to be higher than in 2015.

But the battery capacity (3,500mAh) is 100mAh less than the one featured in the Galaxy S7 Edge. While this does not always indicate that the battery life will be pants, the Galaxy Note 5 only shipped with a 3,000mAh battery but it did raise an eye brow or two.

The handset is also rumoured to be two grams lighter than its predecessor, the Galaxy Note 5, and will reportedly feature a microSD slot that supports cards up to 256GB. There’s also reports of a stylus and 4GB of RAM add-on.

Samsung is expected to unveil the Galaxy Note 7 at a dedicated launch event on 2 August. The phone is unlikely to launch with the ‘Galaxy Note 6’ name, and is rumoured to feature a curved dual-edge display, just like the Samsung Galaxy S7 Edge.

If you look at adverts for Samsung’s new Galaxy you would be forgiven for thinking that the smartphone is waterproof. Unfortunately according to US consumer reports, it isn’t.

The Samsung advert shown in Italy ends with the dramatic placing of a Galaxy into a glass of water. Which looks impressive.

Consumer Reports performs an immersion test when a manufacturer claims that its product is water-resistant and the Galaxy S7 Active failed.

While the phone performed extremely well in other tests. Consumer Reports is refusing to recommend it because the water resistant claim is incorrect.

Samsung says its phone follows an engineering standard called IP68 that covers both dust- and water-resistance, and that the phone is designed to survive immersion in five feet of water for 30 minutes.

Consumer Reports placed a Galaxy S7 Active in a water tank pressurised to 2.12 pounds-per-square-inch, the equivalent of just under five feet of water, and set a timer for 30 minutes. When it removed the phone, the screen was obscured by green lines, and tiny bubbles were visible in the lenses of the front- and rear-facing cameras. The touchscreen was borked.

A second Galaxy S7 Active also failed the same test and neither phone worked properly again.

Samsung says it has received “very few complaints” about this problem, and that in all cases, the phones were covered under warranty. A spokesSamsung sang:

“The Samsung Galaxy S7 active device is one of the most rugged phones to date and is highly resistant to scratches and IP68 certified. There may be an off-chance that a defective device is not as watertight as it should be.”

Samsung has been showing off its Vulkan API improvements for its Galaxy S7 and S7 edge.

The S7’s are being billed as the first smartphones in the world to support Vulkan APIs out of the box, and Samsung wants mobile gamers to buy the. Now, Samsung has released a video that shows how Vulkan API improves gaming performance on the Galaxy S7 and S7 edge.

The games involved were Need for Speed No Limits, Heroes of Incredible Tales, and Vainglory. There is clearly improved graphics quality, performance and frame rate stability between Vulkan API and OpenGL.

Super Evil Megacorp’s Tommy Krul whose outfit built Vainglory said Samsung had been a big help porting his outfit’s games to Vulkan.

“We actually had engineers from Samsung right here in our office helping us port Vainglory to Vulkan and really squeeze out all the performance we can,” he said

In addition to Vulkan, the Galaxy S7 and S7 edge come with features such as Game Tools and Game Launcher that are quite helpful for mobile gamers. Samsung is also testing new versions of Game Launcher and Game Tools, which are expected to be released soon. The company is also testing a new app launcher based on Vulkan for smoother performance.

Samsung has unveiled its 10-nanometer LPDDR4 6GB mobile DRAM which is probably heading for the much rumoured Galaxy Note 6 in August this year.

According to Huanquie the Galaxy Note 6 is going to feature a 5.8-inch ‘Slim RGB’ AMOLED display with a Snapdragon 823 processor with 6GB of RAM. The Galaxy Note 6 is rumoured to have an iris scanner, if you have any that need scanning.

Now it seems that the Note 6 will be the first consumer device from Samsung to feature its LPDDR4 6GB DRAM, it will also end up in the Galaxy S8 but that was sort of a given.

Built on the 10nm process the 6GB DRAM should provide more power while consuming less energy and extend the battery life . Samsung has started firmware development for the Galaxy Note 6 and that the handset is likely to arrive in August.

According to Digitimes it fell to less than 30 million units in 2015 and the outfit suffering most was AMD. The largest graphics card player Palit Microsystems, which has several brands including Palit and Galaxy, shipped 6.9-7.1 million graphics cards in 2015, down 10 per cent on year. Asustek Computer shipped 4.5-4.7 million units in 2015, while Colorful shipped 3.9-4.1 million units, and is aiming to raise its shipments by 10 per cent on year in 2016.

Micro-Star International (MSI) enjoyed healthy graphics card shipments at 3.45-3.55 million in 2015, up 15 per cent on year, and EVGA, which has tight partnerships with Nvidia, also saw a significant shipment growth, while Gigabyte suffered from a slight drop on year. Sapphire and PowerColor suffered dramatic drops in shipments in 2015.

There are fears that several of the smaller GPU makers could be forced out of the market after AMD gets its act together with the arrival of Zen and Nvidia's next-generation GPU architectures launch later in 2016.

A leaked benchmark shows that the Galaxy A9 Pro might be the largest phablet to be launched this year, it's will have a mid-range specs.

Other than a 15cm display and a 4GB RAM, the phone will be pretty much like the rest of the mid-range Galaxy A phones.

As per the AnTuTu benchmark spotted by Sammobile, Galaxy A9 Pro will have a Full HD display, 32GB of internal storage, a 4GB RAM, a Snapdragon 652 processor with an Adreno 510 GPU, a 4,000 mAh battery, a microSD slot and a 16MP rear camera. It will have Android 6.0.1 Marshmallow OS.

We already know Galaxy A9 Snapdragon 620 (MSM8976) processors will have four Cortex A-53 CPU cores and four Cortex A-72 cores. It will also contain an Adreno 510 GPU as well. The phone was also slated to feature 32GB of internal storage. 3GB of RAM, 16MP and 5MP cameras as well as a 6-inch Super AMOLED display. So although this is similar to the Pro it is unlikely that both will have a 6-inch display. The Pro is too similar in spec and there is no need for Samsung to launch another 6-inch phone at the same time. The inferior RAM and processor suggests that Galaxy A9 won't need powerful engines to run its gigantic display.

Details on the Samsung Galaxy A9, a new super-sized mid-range smartphone, have been posted on the web.

We already knew that Samsung was going to refresh its classy-but-affordable A-range, but the outfit was not finished with the Galaxy A3, Galaxy A5, and Galaxy A7.

A leaked official promo documents and pictures has appeared on on Weibo, which show off a new top model in the A-range. One of the phones is the Galaxy A9, and it's going to be big.

The Galaxy A9 apparently features a 6-inch 1080p Super Amoled display, pitching it above even the Samsung Galaxy Note 5 in screen size.

Powering it is a Snapdragon 620 octa-core CPU. It has 3GB of RAM, and will be supported by 32GB of expandable storage. Like the rest of the A-range it'll feature a metal frame and dual 2.5D glass panels.

The A9 has a 13-megapixel camera with OIS and an f/1.9 lens. There'll be an 8-megapixel front-facing camera for those without friends who cant do anything without snapping themselves doing it..

Samsung will be adding Samsung Pay compatibility to the A9, too and it has a home button-mounted fingerprint sensor like the Galaxy S6.

It has a mega 4,000mAh battery. The similar sized Galaxy Note 5 has just 3,000mAh battery. The Samsung Galaxy A9 is set to hit China in January for CNY 3,000.

According to a leaked document, the Galaxy Note 5 and Galaxy S6 Edge+ will get Android 6.0 in December.

They will be followed by the Galaxy S6 and Galaxy S6 Edge in January. The third wave of upgrades is scheduled for February and it will include Galaxy Note 4 and Galaxy Note Edge phones.

All these phones have been already approved for an update. The Galaxy S5 and Galaxy Alpha phones are still awaiting approval. The first phase of upgrade ends with these devices.

The second phase includes Galaxy A8, Galaxy A7, Galaxy A5, Galaxy A3, Galaxy E7 and Galaxy E5. All these devices are still waiting for approval.

The Android upgrade cycle and its delays have been a cancer of the whole ecosystem and Samsung is not immune. The company allocated a significant number of engineers to offer these upgrades. Soon after the top 2015 get Android 6.0 it will be the time for Samsung Galaxy S7 launch.